Photographer's Haunting Series Humanizes Los Angeles' Homeless With Close And Personal Portraits

By Carolina Moreno

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Photo courtesy of Pablo Unzueta

Even today, Pablo Unzueta vividly recalls the moments he spent as a child helping his grandmother with her photography.

“I just remember being in the dark room and the smell, waking up early because my grandmother had to develop the print,” he recently told The Huffington Post.

The Los Angeles born and bred photographer knows now that those years accompanying his grandmother to photograph weddings and people on the city’s streets are what most influenced his own passion for photography. Unzueta, 20, was particularly inspired by his Chilean grandmother’s long-term project in Central America, in which she photographed impoverished children who roamed the landfills in search of food in El Salvador and Guatemala.

“I even remember the gallery showing she had for that,” Unzueta said. “I was like 8 years old, I just remember seeing the final product and I was intrigued by it. That was basically my first influence; I knew what it was kind of about but I never knew that I would get into documentary photography myself.”

Unzueta’s father is also a photographer, working with the Associated Press in Chile, and his mother is a painter. But when he purchased his first camera at the age of 17, his first photograph mirrored his grandmother’s work with poverty.

“I bought my first camera and the first place I photographed was Skid Row,” Unzueta recalled. “I remember the first frame I ever took too. I still have it on file. It’s of a guy, an African-American male who is sleeping on the pavement and behind him is the warehouse and you have these poles in between. That was the first frame I shot and it was at night. It was around 10 o’clock.”

“I just thought, ‘I can’t believe that some humans live like that, just on the street,’ [and] I just felt compelled to take that photograph,” he added. “I have to admit, I didn’t really appreciate it until maybe two years later.”

Since then, Unzueta has made it a point to document the lives of the city’s homeless population. Both his mother and grandmother moved back to their native Chile, but he stayed behind in the LA area to work on his photography.

To support himself financially, he works as a cook at a bar. During his free time, Unzueta walks around the LA area looking to make a connection with one of the thousands of individuals who call the city’s streets home. Unzueta’s project not only features his subject’s portraits but also their stories.

“I just want to humanize people,” Unzueta said. “I get a lot of people that tell me, ‘Dude, I’ve never looked at somebody this way until you shared that story, until you took that photograph. I never saw a homeless person like this.’ There’s a lot of stereotypes, like ‘they chose to live this way, it’s their fault.’ So I just want to show people that it’s not so black and white.”

“I met a guy who was a lawyer and he got a divorce and he lost all his finances and he’s on the street now,” he said. “I met a professor who studied economics, you know? How ironic. And he’s now on the street. So I’ve met a lot of interesting characters.”

“Nobody really pays attention to it, and when you see it in these pictures in the LA Times or something like that, they use the zoom lens, everybody keeps a distance,” said Unzueta, who instead approaches his subjects directly, sometimes by offering clothing or other donations.

He first asks individuals about their daily lives on the streets and later for their pictures. The stories are placed in the captions of his Instagram photos.

“I just want to ... get my audience, and even further beyond that, to see things differently, to see the world in a different way rather than, ‘Oh, it’s just another person on the street,’” he added. “It’s such a social norm that nobody really bothers to get to know that person, so why not me do my part and bring that in the comfort of someone’s hand, on their phone.”

Unzueta says he feels the project could eventually become a book. He also sees it as a good way to prepare himself for what he hopes to do later on in his career.

“Eventually I plan on moving on to conflict photography, travel, stuff like that,” he said. “But also because I live 15 to 20 minutes away from LA and I have stories from all over that city that nobody, not even professionals, really touch on. So I just feel like I need to tell that story, while I’m young and while I’m still trying to make a name for myself. Why not try to help people out?”

When asked what photo has resonated with him the most over the years, Unzueta was unable to choose one. But he did admit to being particularly struck by one photo he took during an April trip to New York City.

“I was walking around the subways and I remember photographing an older gentleman, African-American. He was just going on about how he didn’t choose to be here and how he just sits there and it’s cold and there was a blizzard last year and how he hates it,” Unzueta said of the picture featured just above. “ I just remember after I photographed him a couple of times, I shook his hand and I was on my way, but then I saw this perfect image behind these bars. He was right there behind the bars, sitting down, and I just remember snapping like three frames of him behind the bars.”

“I think I just thought, ‘Man, most of these people in a way are locked in the world of poverty, they’re locked in,’” he added. “And that’s how I saw the bars, as something symbolic.”

Photographer's Haunting Series Humanizes Los Angeles' Homeless With Close And Personal Portraits

Telling The Stories Of Homeless Women

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Laura*

Laura was 18 when she was evicted. Sadly, a homeless centre was the only option left for her.
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Despite the homeless centre informing external services that they didn't have accommodation available for Laura, she was dropped at the door of a drop-in centre at 4pm with her possessions and with no plan.
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There was no viable option for accommodation so the agency who dropped her off suggested that she stayed with a friend who lived in supported accommodation. With no permission from the landlord, this situation placed the friend in breech of her tenancy.
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At this point in her life, Laura had left care for just a few months. She had no positive role models in her life and did not grow up learning the skills others often take for granted.
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She had been victim to repeated abuse and would spend long periods out of contact. On some occasions, she was registered as 'missing persons'. The abuse, as well as other scarring life events, have left her with little trust for others.
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Agencies continue to work together to try to assist Laura but she continues to move through life from one crisis to another. She is a very vulnerable person. Meanwhile, safe and appropriate accommodation is hard to find.
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Laura eventually sabotaged all efforts to assist her and failed to attend numerous support and safeguarding meetings.
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She is currently living with her family, but should this come to an end, her lifestyle means that she will remain a concern of sexual exploitation.